


Aberration

by Lizardbeth



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Established Relationship, Infinity Gems, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-20
Updated: 2017-04-20
Packaged: 2018-10-21 11:11:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10684110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lizardbeth/pseuds/Lizardbeth
Summary: Loki learns a horrifying truth during the battle with Thanos





	Aberration

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lena7142](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lena7142/gifts).



> From a request at my tumblr (lizardbeths) for Steve/Loki from portraitoftheoddity

* * *

 

Was it over? Steve wanted to believe it was.

While not everyone had made it out, the people closest to Steve did, and in his most selfish moments, he’d admit to being especially glad for Loki, who took the brunt of the counter-attack, wielding the Time Gem after Strange fell. His effort let them end Thanos, and peace is restored on Earth, Asgard, and Nova Prime. (who ever thought Steve Rogers of Brooklyn would walk on another planet?)

There had been a moment Steve had feared the cost was too high. Loki had vanished after the gem flared with emerald light. The ground was bare, the dust swirled against the light, and Loki was gone without a trace. The battle followed, Thanos fell, and the Avengers and their allies counted their victories and their losses.

Steve had waited, heart tight, and exchanged an agonized glance with Thor, who likewise stared into the swirling dust with desperate hope.

Steve had barely begun to accept that Loki was gone, when a shadow appeared against the golden dust, and Loki walked into view. His casual saunter seemed out of a dream, as were his bare hands and untouched armor as if nothing had happened. Loki had laughed at Steve’s expression, and Steve had wanted to smack him for frightening him, even while he’d let his hands and mouth prove his eyes weren’t deceiving him.

But the day after they’d collapsed in their bed for the first time in weeks, Loki was standing silently at the narrow window, looking out at the snow falling. He seemed pensive and silent, far away. Ordinarily Steve would let him brood, but there was a quality to his silence that felt different from his usual. A shiver crept up Steve's spine that something was wrong.

“Hey,” Steve murmured, standing behind his shoulder. “You okay?”

Loki turned his head and grinned. “Of course. I’m here, aren’t I?” But it was a lie soon forgotten, and the smile faded as he turned back to the window.

“You’re here,” Steve agreed, “but not all of you. Were you hurt in the battle and you’re not telling me?”

“No.” Loki shook his head. “I am well.”

Steve didn’t believe that. He was unhurt, perhaps, but not well. “What is it then?”

Loki didn’t answer at first. He touched the window and a line of frost rose from his finger, forming and branching into random lines across the surface. “During the battle, with the Gem…” he trailed off, a shadow in his eyes as he stared at the icy trails for a long moment, caught in his memories. Before Steve could prompt him, he continued, “I saw… myself. Not me, another me. Doing….” his voice fell to a whisper, “terrible things. Monstrous things. I was leading the Chitauri against New York. I… stabbed Thor. I don’t always _like_ him very much, but I would never do that. I saw myself fighting you….”

Steve slipped his arms around Loki’s waist and pulled him flush against him. “It wasn’t you, it was just a dream.”

“No, you fail to understand. It was me. I saw myself amid the branches of time, reflections of what might have been. There were many… so many where I was a monster,” he whispered. “As if that is who I am meant to be, and this me is the … aberration.”

It made Steve’s heart hurt to hear Loki, who already felt so different because of his ancestry, refer to himself as an _aberration_.

“No, no, _no_ ,” Steve rejected. “There’s no such thing, Loki. This is our reality, and this is who you are.” Kissing the taut lines of Loki’s neck, he flattened both palms against Loki’s abdomen, one hand caressing up to his chest. “Other realities are different.”

“Not that different. I could be that Loki. I could have been--” Steve grazed Loki’s skin with his teeth, and Loki caught his breath, interrupting himself. “Steve….”

“Hush. You’re not a monster. You’re never going to be a monster. I promise.”

“For always?” Loki returned, voice slightly unsteady, and his laugh held cracks of fear and doubt. “I don’t think you can promise that.”

Steve pushed on his shoulder, turning Loki around to be eye to eye. He should draw Loki again, just like this. The low light of the lamps fell on his face so perfectly. “I can,” Steve reassured him. “I can because I know who you are.”

Loki swallowed hard and his tongue dampened his lips. “Only because of you,” he whispered. “Without you--”

“Without me, you’ll continue to be a hero. Because I believe in you. So do many others. _You_ need to believe it.” His hand slid down to lay on Loki’s chest over his heart. “Here.”

Loki’s gaze dropped, veiling his eyes but not at all hiding the doubt. “I try,” he murmured. “You know I try.”

Steve bit his lip, not knowing what more to say to convince him. He'd known about Loki's loathing for his true ancestry, but now the visions had reinforced it. Words were not going to be enough. But there were other ways. “I know, but you need to believe. So I’ll have to show you.” Steve drew his left hand slid down with slow deliberation and stopped with his fingers teasing just under Loki’s waistband, touching the cool, smooth skin. “Shift for me.”

Loki flinched back and his eyes flicked up to meet Steve's, wide with shock. “What?”

Steve started unbuttoning Loki’s shirt. “Show me your true skin.”

Loki tried to jerk away, but Steve’s grip on his shirt kept him still. Loki shook his head, in frantic denial, lips pressed together as if he were tempted to vomit. “No. You don’t want that. You saw -- you know--” He finished in a bare whisper, head down. "It's the truth. The creature I am inside. I know it; even if I try to pretend otherwise." 

Steve was shaking his head before Loki finished. It was true that he'd seen Loki's Jotunn form briefly, when Thanos had forced him to shift. But nothing else in that despairing admission was true. "Oh God, no, Loki, it doesn't make you a 'creature'," Steve told him. "Not at all. It was terrible because he was made you do it against your will, but there's nothing wrong with your Jotunn appearance. It's you, and I want to show you that I find it beautiful. Not monstrous."

Loki found a different excuse. “No. It’s dangerous."

“Not to me.” When Loki tried to push away, Steve framed his face between his hands. “Let me make love to you and show you how beautiful you are,” he whispered to Loki. “This skin, or blue, doesn’t matter. It’s you. Change, and I’ll prove there’s nothing monstrous about you.”

“You can’t want that. You’re absurd,” Loki protested, voice ragged and brows furrowed. His eyes looked wet.

Steve could never hope to withstand that. He leaned in to kiss the lips, meaning to give a softer touch of comfort and reassurance, except Loki pressed into it. Loki’s hands slid beneath Steve’s shirt, clutching him close.

They’d stumbled back from the window, clothes on the floor, with Loki prowling above him on the bed, when Steve realized he’d been waylaid from his intent.

It was hard to focus with Loki’s hands - such good hands - sliding up his thighs. But he remembered what he’d wanted to do, and surged upward to roll them over so Loki was on his back and Steve now crouching above him.

“Well?” Loki taunted, smirking, and he had to know he was breathtaking with that raven hair in disarray against the pillow, one hand cupping the back of Steve’s neck and his leg wrapped around Steve’s to keep their lower bodies pressed together.

“You nearly succeeded in distracting me, but it won’t work,” Steve told him, and laid gentle fingers against his cheek. “Shift for me. Show me everything.”

His entire body beneath Steve’s went rigid with rejection and he probably would’ve scrambled away if Steve weren’t on top of him. Steve caressed his face. “It’s okay, I’m here,” Steve murmured. "I’ve already seen. I’m not going anywhere.”

Loki’s eyes shut tight and he shook his head side to side in denial.

“Yes,” Steve whispered and touched his lips with a delicate finger. “Please. Please, you know I won’t reject you, you must know that. But let me show you, prove it to you, so you can stop fearing it.”

He was still shaking his head, chewing his lower lip with distress, trembling. But slowly his head shake came to a stop and his hand found Steve’s. He didn’t pull away when Steve’s fingers wrapped his, and Steve waited, while Loki calmed down. Then Loki whispered, “All right. Don’t let go.”

Steve kissed his fingers. “I won’t,” he promised, meaning it not just for this moment, but for always.

Loki’s eyes opened and stared into his. Steve nodded encouragement and Loki inhaled a ragged breath before letting it out more controlled.

The color of his eyes, the whites and the iris, shifted first, turning a dark ruby. A golden light rippled over his skin, which faded to grey in its wake, before turning pale blue. Ridges rose in his forehead and along the back of the hand Steve held, as the nails turned black.

As the shift stabilized, he was so tense Steve was afraid something might shatter. His red eyes were wary, watching Steve closely for signs of revulsion and rejection. But there was nothing fearful, nothing monstrous, about what Steve saw. Smiling softly, Steve said, “There you are.” His free hand caressed Loki’s forehead and down his cheek. “So beautiful. Amazing.” He dipped his head to kiss him again. Loki gasped at the touch of his lips, perhaps it was a sob, and he gripped Steve’s shoulders as if he intended never to let go either.

His lips were not quite as warm as they had been, but they were still the same lips that clung to Steve’s fiercely. As Steve had known, there was nothing dangerous in the touch of that skin, as Steve started to explore it with hands and mouth. When Steve let his tongue wander the delicious plane of his abdomen and closed his lips over the arousal he found at the end of his journey, there was no strangeness, only pleasure.

Steve took his time, easing away all the self-conscious tension, until Loki was aware only of Steve’s touch and his body’s needs. His lean form writhed, black nails clawing at Steve's shoulders, urging him on, as Steve’s last driving thrust launched him from the heights. He cried out, head thrown back, and Steve watched an indigo flush spread across his chest and up into his neck as he came. So gorgeous.

When Loki shuddered down from climax at last and blinked himself back to alertness, he looked tired, but at peace. He didn’t move or speak while Steve cleaned up and stretched out beside him again. He was heartened to see that Loki was still in the Jotunn form, and that let him break the silence.

“So, I think I showed you I like how you look, right?” Steve asked, pulling the sheets up over them. "That I find it beautiful and hot. I mean it." 

"You did," Loki admitted. "Even if I still feel like you're... humoring me."

Steve snorted. "That was some pretty thorough humoring. But I'd be happy to do it again, if you weren't persuaded?"  

Loki gave a laugh that sounded honestly amused, and Steve was relieved. "I am quite thoroughly humored, for now." He freed his hand to examine it, turning it over to look at the markings. Steve wondered if that was the first time he looked at his own skin without visible revulsion. “You -- don’t mind?” he asked, voice becoming tentative. “If I stay like this?”

Steve wanted to laugh and gather him in a crushing embrace, ‘ _mind? No, I don’t mind, I’m thrilled_ ….’ But he didn’t say it aloud, fearing his exuberance would be taken the wrong way. So he answered, trying to steady sincerity, “No, be however you want. Stay blue forever.”

Lok barked of a laugh. “I’m not ready for that.”

“Then for tonight. As long as you like.” Steve wrapped an arm across him and pulled him against his chest, spooning skin to skin, so he would know there was nothing about it Steve didn’t want.

He dipped his head to kiss Loki’s shoulder and the nape of his neck as best he could beneath all that black hair, which had stayed the same glorious mane. “You’re still you,” Steve murmured. “Still the idiot who picked up a goddamn Infinity Stone with his bare hands to give the rest of us a chance. Remember that? I do. Don’t ever do that again.”

Loki let out a long slow breath, and murmured, “Love you, too. Mortal Monkey.”

“Not as much as I love you, Baby Blue.” Steve waited to see how Loki would take the new nickname, but besides a sleepy hum, there was no response.

Steve smiled into Loki’s shoulder, and closed his eyes.

 

* * *

end.

 


End file.
